A project is an enterprise that may involve a set of tasks that are planned to achieve a particular result. Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and coordinating resources to achieve specific goals to bring about the particular result. A project may include a starting date and a completion date that depend upon the complexity and time requirements of the tasks to be completed. Each project task may also have deadlines that are determined and modified based upon the progress of other project tasks. A project may be determined to be finished when the associated tasks are finished.
Project management systems are computer systems that aid users in initiating, planning, executing, and monitoring various aspects of a large project. For example, a project management system may be used to schedule the events of a project. A project management system may help the user to overcome some common challenges in scheduling such as: (1) scheduling events that depend upon the outcome of other circumstances, (2) scheduling events that have an inexact duration, and (3) scheduling events in conjunction with the scheduling of necessary resources.
A project management system may also be used to provide relevant information to stakeholders of a large project. Such information may include: (1) estimates on the time required to finish various tasks of the project, (2) warnings about possible circumstances adverse to the completion of the project, (3) description of the workload at various stages of the project, (4) ways to optimize the resources of the project, and (5) the costs associated with the project.